1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, an image processing method, and a storage medium storing a program for executing the method, and more particularly, to an image processing apparatus having a storage unit in which electronic data created by an external unit are saved.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image processing apparatus such as a digital multifunction peripheral (MFP) is conventionally able to save print data or document data obtained by scanning documents into a storage unit thereof and convert the saved data into an arbitrary electronic format for transmission.
Also proposed is a technique in which data saved into a storage unit of an image processing apparatus is added with an electronic signature unique to the image processing apparatus (hereinafter referred to as equipment signature) and transmitted to the outside (see, for example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-274404). Equipment signature verifies that data has been created by the image processing apparatus.
Incidentally, if a storage unit of an image processing apparatus is made open via network to external personal computers or other external units, digitized data/electronic data (hereinafter collectively referred to as electronic data) created by external units are saved into the storage unit as well as print data and document data created by the image processing apparatus. When data created by the image processing apparatus and external units are mixedly saved into the storage unit of the image processing apparatus, the following problems are posed.
For example, if data created by some external unit and stored in the image processing apparatus is added with equipment signature and transmitted to the outside, the reliability of equipment signature (more generally, identification information) is lowered.
Most of data created by external units cannot be image-processed by the image processing apparatus. Therefore, even if the image processing apparatus accepts a request for image processing on data created by some external unit, it cannot perform image processing on that data in some cases.